


Stay as Sick as You Are

by viceindustrious



Category: Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Character Death, Dark, Gore, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:37:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceindustrious/pseuds/viceindustrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coward has some unsavory appetites, Blackwood is happy to indulge him. (Includes minor references to the death of Holmes and Watson and some rather unpleasant allusions but nothing TOO awfully graphic in general).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay as Sick as You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many, thanks to [ClementineStarling](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ClementineStarling) for working their necromancy on this fandom. I needed to write something short and (not) sweet to shake the dust off.

The boy is bound belly down on the altar. The floor around the altar is stained deep. Flecks of bone from the night before, brown fur of blood spattered mould almost hidden in the uneasy candlelight. Blackwood grimaces, clearly the household staff have grown inattentive here in this killing room – scrubbing with too hasty hands, the stiff bristles of bassine brushes only packing the gore down tighter between the gaps of the flagstones.

The mess never seems to bother Coward. His Coward, who is fastidious to a fault and frowns when the February slush of mud and ice dirties up his shoes, will stand quite cheerfully barefoot in waxy intestines as they spill out in steaming coils upon the floor.

Coward will make promises to address the situation, as always, a fondness to his smile that suggests he finds Blackwood’s complaints somehow endearing. Last time, Blackwood had watched the drug of cruelty turn Coward familiar, affectionate, with one of the maids as she sobbed silently on knees beside the stone. Pressing tender kisses upon her temple and telling her that if she did well she might yet live.

She had pushed her little brush about so hard, rubbing her tears into the floor and never had time to unburden herself of any of the pleas bundled up inside her trembling breast. Coward had cracked her head wide open on the hard, sharp edge of the altar while her eyes had been raised to Blackwood, frozen in that moment with a pitiful sort of hope still shining there.

In a way, the room reminds Blackwood of Pentonville and his incarceration. A necessary sojourn, as unavoidable as his sacrificial spectacles and those he had been obliged to dispose of before them. He had never found much _particular_ pleasure in murder, only in the efficiency a blade could bring to his ambitions.

Playing the part of the defeated villain had been something sweeter, sitting in his little cell while the storm outside gathered around him. Murmuring biblical verse, oh that had been part showmanship, but the power it spoke of resonated deep within him. His apocalypse. He slept like a dead man before his execution, better than he had in years.

Even at that late hour, he had been sure Coward’s death would be another necessity. Up until the penultimate moment of his triumph, standing in the House with Coward staring up at him. How had he not seen it before? This was more than the acolyte’s mere devotion. Coward, all the cunning of a serpent, a predator who dissembled as easily as he drew breath, gazing at him without an ounce of guile; unmasked, open adoration.

And after, Coward came and knelt before him and tipped his head so his throat was bared. Blackwood could have cut it then. It seemed as though Coward was offering himself for it. Perhaps if it had not been for the offering, he would have at that.

Blackwood had told him, _stay_ , and so he had and later, simply, _come to my bed_ , and he had been obedient in that too. He was so slow and serious in the stripping of his clothes, he seemed still ready to go to his death. Eyes dark and a dash of scarlet across the top of his cheekbones and his cock standing stiff before Blackwood had touched him once. When he spread Coward’s thighs apart, the body beneath his hands trembled. _I’ve never,_ Coward had whispered, _not . . . like this I mean_.

A miraculous thing, a virgin without an ounce of purity in him. Blackwood would not have believed it. As it turned out, the pleasures of Coward’s youth had run to more rarefied games. Intoxicating, to thrust into such unwholesome virtue. Coward’s body fell to him like a perfect wanton. His desire, something sweetly rotten or with the rich tang of high game meat.

Was he already in love by then? That epiphany does not come until much later. One evening, as their cab rocks over the cobblestones with its lullaby clatter of stone and iron, Coward’s head slips from its resting place on Blackwood’s shoulder. Drowsy fingers curl around the chain of his pocket watch as Coward huffs against his neck, shuffling closer and settling back into him. His hair is soft. Blackwood tilts his head and breathes in the warm, evening time scent of him, faint musk of oil buried near his skin after the day’s exertions. An ache inside him intensifies, something that has been nameless until this moment. _Possession_ ¸ he thinks at first, and that is certainly part of it. He looks at the glint of gold chain, wrapped around Coward’s finger and finds himself smiling.

Coward is calmest in such in-between times; just before sunset, just after dawn. The small hours find him prowling the corridors, restless and difficult to predict. He says he finds the cast of artificial light fascinating, touches Blackwood’s shadow with the same reverence he pays his body. He seems surprised at any concern and says in all the time he was working toward their victory he never slept past four hours in a night. The work they are about now is far less taxing and when – ‘ _when, my lord, you take away my diversions . . ._ ’ - why is sleep necessary at all?

Coward’s dearest diversion, put away by Blackwood by means of a bullet, had been Holmes. Holmes and his doctor friend, both bequeathed to Coward after the end of the old world. He’d begged for them while Blackwood was feeling generous and truth be told, Blackwood had forgotten about the pair until the afternoon when Coward came to him, sullen and blood stained, pouting over Watson’s untimely demise. He was still holding the knife, his hand trembling, blinking furiously.

Blackwood had kissed those lips, chapped from licking, over and over again. Coward staring up at the ceiling as Blackwood fucked him, his body tense and tight.

‘ _I'll serve him carpaccio_ ,' Coward murmurs afterwards, hands between his legs, smearing semen between his fingers dreamily. _To Holmes, of course. Do you think I should tell him afterwards or before?_ '

In a cold, wet little cell that stinks of decay, Blackwood presses the barrel of the gun to Holmes' temple. Closes his eyes and sees Coward's boyish smile, opens them to the horror in front of him. Pulls the trigger.

Later, he will wrench Coward's elbow out of its socket in the effort to hold him still as he spits and snarls beneath him.

 _‘Don't you know what they would have done to you? He deserved to pay . ._.’

When the bone pops free, Coward shivers and makes a little gasping noise of revelation, pants as he rubs his face against the floor and starts pleading for forgiveness. Begs pardon for his disrespect.

Sometimes Blackwood dreams of a throne in a great hall. At the base there is a ring through which to thread a chain and a collar for Coward. In the company of others, his hand finds Coward's neck more often than not, resting there as he speaks to his followers and reading the hairs on the back of Coward's neck. He can see the way Coward looks at them.

‘ _But you saw Holmes_ ,’ Coward says. ‘ _You saw? Didn't you like it? I . . . I would like you to have seen me, my lord. Wouldn't it please you? Remember the girl that almost broke free, how you held her down while I snipped her open_.’

The word _snipped_ is slurred into his palm, Coward's lips against his hand, kissing his fingers. So beautifully hungry. He pushes his fingers against Coward's gums, his mouth all pink and white and wet. There had been bite marks on Holmes.

Is he surprised? He nurtured all that was rabid in Coward, prised open what had been battened down behind cravats and cufflinks. Coward was meant to have been destroyed along with the other disposable pieces of his plan, what's left behind is teetering, sharp and half sane and fiercely loyal.

And cannot be starved now. Not if he wants him warm and pliant in his bed.

Thus the altar, thus the boy. One in a string of victims. Blackwood does not know this one's name, though he is sure Coward does. Blackwood has no interest in their names or faces, it is like with the girls before – they are nothing more than materia. He keep his focus from them. They will not haunt him. Mere shapes; pastel smudges of flesh on the altar, bodies broken like the brush strokes of an impressionist painting, vibrant and immediate.

All the detail lies in Coward, torso bare, rising up behind the altar. Bosch rather than Monet.

Blackwood gifted him a poire-angoisse for his last birthday. Coward had read the description of the instrument out loud to him in bed, translating from the old french book in his hand and Blackwood had the thing made up for him. In the book, they were used on the mouth. Choak pears. Tear drop gags fashioned out of iron, forced between the teeth and then opened wide by means of a screw.

Coward has it in his hand now, lovingly rubbing his thumb back and forth over the engraved metal.

There is a patch of blood just below the boy's left ankle. His legs have been drawn wide apart. His skin is sallow and dirty and bruised. He was pink and plump when Coward first picked him out, but that was over a fortnight ago. Blackwood used to have an appetite for such things, indeed, he can still recall the evening Coward inclined his head to the parlour maid lighting the lamps and smiled – ‘ _yours for the asking.’_

And one evening during dinner, Coward nibbles elegant and thoughtful at his chicken and finally wonders out loud how long it might take for a person to be desperate enough to make a meal of a rat.

Now, Coward rests his hand on the small of the boy’s back, but his eyes are on Blackwood the whole time.

“All the world may credit me what folly they please. Until wisdom gifts me some greater happiness, I am satisfied to be gazed at,” Coward murmurs.

His fingers are flexing on the pear, his smile broad with challenge.

How often has he discovered Coward pouring over the _Inferno,_ flushed and worrying his bottom lip with his teeth? At first he’d assumed Coward still suffered a disappointing fear of hellfire. It had taken some time for him to correctly translate the blush in Coward’s cheeks to its true cause.

“Is that how you want him?” Blackwood asks.

The boy can’t move his arms or his legs, only his fingers and toes flex futile in the air. Coward looks down at them, then back at Blackwood, shrugs his shoulders slightly.

“Is he the one who should be there?” Blackwood says.

Coward stares back at him, hard.

“Well?” Blackwood asks, after a moment has passed.

Cowards fingers are still stroking the pear, absently. His lips part, as if to answer, but it seems he can find no words. It’s little matter to Blackwood, Coward’s mouth is an invitation and he captures it with kisses, harsh and full of teeth. He bites down on Coward’s lower lip, harder and harder until Coward makes a jagged, plaintive sound.

“Please, wait . . . I,” Coward gasps.

But as soon as he has the space to speak he falls silent, staring up at Blackwood.

“Well?” Blackwood repeats.

Coward blinks. He licks his lips and Blackwood follows the pass of his tongue. His mouth looks so tender. He taps the head of the pear against his chin and then breaks into a grin. He gives it a little kiss, then blows one to Blackwood.

“I want you to see what I can do,” he says, pauses, lowers his eyes like a studied coquette. “And then . . .”            

“And then what?” Blackwood asks.

“And then you can show what me what you can do.”

“Oh, you intend to leave enough of him for me to practice on after you’re through?”

Coward’s grin widens. “Not on _him_ , my lord.”


End file.
